It intrigues me that I was interviewed for a job that had I been successful, I would have been one of them doing up these short summaries for Straits Times dot com!

But I really want to draw your attention to this short review by the editor of the Review & Forum section on December 18 2009.

It’s immediately relevant to me because it mentions that degree holders account for a large proportion of the unemployed and absolute numbers of them are higher in 2009 than in 2008, which was unusual as the most intense period of job cuts was in 2008.

The editor goes on to try to explain the situation.

“Conventional explanations like graduates being demanding about pay and conditions of work, taking a time-out to “recharge” (whatever this means), or job hopping to land the ideal occupation do not do justice to the majority of young people who are serious about career development.”

This just sounds like my generation. Being choosy and picky about jobs, wanting to rest after studies have burnt us out, and trying to change jobs to find a better fit are exactly what I’ve been observing around me.

The editor goes on to try to explain for the “young people who are serious about career development”.

He thinks that two reasons why these people can’t find jobs are:

Job fit. The situation in which University churns out people irrelevant to society.

Competition with foreign workers who accept lower pay.

Recently, I met a man who told me he was retrenched when his company decided to get a new batch of foreign workers to replace them. He told me that a man like him cannot compete with foreign singles as he has a family to support. He also gave a similar scenario of how his wife lost her job when the company decided to relocate to another country where all things are cheaper. It’s the first time I’ve come so upclose and personal to someone who was really affected by Reason 2.

About Reason 1, this is what the editor has to say:

“Are the universities acutely sensitive to dynamic marketplace change in the kinds of graduate they put out? The fact that polytechnic graduates land jobs faster is an endorsement of their ready-to-market training.”